Be Alert. Make Noise. There is no guarantee of your safety in bear country.
What is this admonition? Can you hear the noise of my
ludicrous happiness?
I’ve stood in a pinafore dress on Central Beach. Riptides
licking my ankles. Salt-spray kissing my cheeks. Waves washing me in the depths
of an ocean below. Alert to golden flecks floating around me below the blue and
white sky above. I’ve made the noise of sputtering and squawking water from my
lungs, clawing my way back to the shore.
I still explore beaches, and waters, and sandbars.
I’ve shared an unabashed duet of Mirror in the Bathroom with
English Beat in the confines of a red Nissan Sentra on the corner of 20st
and Broadway. A would-be car-jacker emphatically pounded the glass of my passenger
side-door. Alert to the shopkeeper jumping on the pavement, waving his arms a
block away, giving warning to my surroundings. I leaned on the horn and
squealed tires in response.
I still delight in the anonymity of urban cities.
I’ve jumped on the hood of a stranger’s car while jogging in
the suburbs of Oakland. Alert to the stillness of the neighborhood,
instinctively barking back at a pit bull. “Fuck you, dog! Fuck you!” I screamed
into the 6:00 am air.
I still wander streets at any hour of the morning and night.
I’ve grown humans from seed within my hara. Delivered them
into existence through my pelvis. Alert to the scent of bodily fluids and
sterile gloves. Panting and growling in between commands to push up to 9 lbs 14
oz under my pelvic bone.
I did this not once, not twice, not thrice, but four
separate times.
I’ve loved deeply. Alert to the crack of my own heart and
the collapse of my own lungs in mourning. Howling each time. Sliding down an
apartment wall. On the stoop of my front
doorstep. In the hallways of a hospital.
I still hold space for lost loves in my heart, and breathe
new love into my lungs.
Have truer, more obvious words been written? “There is no
guarantee of your safety.” And yet, do you hear the noise of my ludicrous happiness?
